Jackson

A life lived holding back is a life not living.

Stripped bare.

Michele has found this piece inside of me I never knew existed.

She lays beside me with her breathing even. Dark hair is splayed over the pillow creating an elegant frame around her face. Her tanned skin glistens under the soft glow of the night’s sky coming in through the window of our bedroom.

Fucking beautiful.

My wife is fucking beautiful.

Damn, I am one lucky fucking bastard to have this right here.

A wife, a beautiful wife who loves me against all odds. I’m the boy from the wrong side of the trailer park. She is the girl with all the potential in the world. Michele could have anyone, but it’s me she loves.

Yes, we live in a single-wide trailer from the eighties, but we live. We both grew up here, literally in this trailer park. It may not be a step up, but it’s ours. And this is just the beginning. We do everything for the future of our life together.

Before Michele, I held back. I existed. Born a bastard boy, I got by, never worrying with what tomorrow may bring. The day I turned eighteen, my mother set me out even though I wasn’t finished with high school yet. She couldn’t afford to keep feeding me and her own addictions, yes, addictions – plural. Medication, street drugs, alcohol, gambling, and fucking shopping, if it has an addictive property she was hooked. She needed every extra penny for herself, not a teenage son she regretted having. Even with the odds against me, I graduated so I could have a future with Michele. So we could have a life built together. I will work three jobs if that is what it takes to give my wife her dreams come true. She taught me to live and to love, something I have never had before.

Now, I live. I fucking love.

I don’t hold back.

Turning over, the mattress frame squeaks from the movement, I press my lips to hers. She groans as she squirms beside me starting to wake up. I trail my hand up her leg and her inner thigh. Teasing her skin, tasting her lips, I get lost.

Her mouth opens and my tongue slides into her depths. As her tongue meets mine there is an explosion of sensation and emotion as I climb over her.

My naked body covers hers as she slides her legs out from under me to wrap them around my waist. Her hips rock up and my cock is home as I fill her joining us together.

Reluctantly, I pull my mouth from hers.

“Peonies,” I touch my nose to her, my cock throbbing inside her for me to move, but I resist. I almost laugh thinking about the ceremony we had less than twelve hours ago. “You fuckin’ got me to wear a pink peony and a damn suit.”

She smiles under me. “I’m worth it.”

“Yeah, you are,” I sigh. “Fuckin’ beautiful. My wife and her peonies.”

She tilts her chin and darts her tongue out to tease my lips.

“Love you, Michele. Love your peonies.” I slide out and back in slowly causing her to gasp from sensation. Love her, I fucking do.

“Love you Jackson Presley,” she whispers before I take her lips and then her body to limits neither of us thought possible.

***

Eight Months Later

“Never fuckin’ lied to you!” I yell out. The metal of the handcuffs is unforgiving as I fight the restraints trying to reach out and hold my wife one more time. The more it bites into my skin, the more I fight against the hold.

“Jackson Presley, don’t make this harder than it has to be.” The deputy trying to hold me says. His words don’t register. Nothing does except the pain in my wife’s eyes.

Her brother is dead and I’m accused of his murder.

I didn’t do it. She can’t see clearly. The man tries to force me to move. The shackles don’t give me any leverage, rather they pinch and send sharp throbs up my arms.

None of it compares to the pain in my heart. Nothing can measure the amount of fight inside me to make her see.

“He was my brother,” she sobs. Her eyes meet mine and they break right in front of me. “The verdict is in Jackson. How can I believe you?” The tears fall and I am unable to wipe them away. “When the court even says you did it, how am I supposed to see what you say?”

“You’re blinded by your grief.”

Her green eyes, they are full of mixed emotions. There is a piece of her that still believes in me, believes in us, and still loves me. I see it and that’s what I am going to hold onto.

As much as this should harden me, I refuse. The fuckers who did this will pay, but I’m not going to hate my wife. I’ll love enough to get us both through this. She will see. In time, she will see.

I can still hear the sound of the gavel pounding down on the wood. The sound is deafening as the judge sealed my fate behind the jury’s verdict.

She turns around as we stand just outside of the courthouse. Her back is to me as she walks away to climb in her car. Michele doesn’t give me a single glance back.

If she would just look inside me, she could see the truth.

She starts the Chevy Lumina, the u-joints squeal reminding me of all the things I need to fix on her car as she turns and pulls away. So many things I planned to do, get fixed, have ready, and I took for granted that tomorrow would come. There is no time now. What’s done is done. My transport to the state prison doesn’t matter anymore.

She’s left me.

Death, come take me now.

I’ll never live again.